Thursday, March 17, 2011

Death Is Fondled Like A Gun

The circus is in town I wear a brass hat for doing the dishes my belt buckle shines I have punched a hole in the wall I need the lucidity of water I wonder what sort of fugue best supports this supposition there is more to Louisiana than you will ever know.

Perception is walking among flowers and bugs while enjoying the resonance of bells or the twang of an electric guitar I dilate among the hawthorn whenever I hear an alarm go off in a book about goldfish and now a new noise twists and convulses in the air but the telephone is silent.

The radio thunders in spectacular despair exhumed lines of dead poetry and the upstairs neighbor a tall man from Taiwan gives me a wide-eyed look of bewilderment maybe because I wrote him a ten-page letter explaining all the reasons for not parking so close to the trash bins but I said nothing sometimes I clash with my own intentions but please believe me when I say that I am trying to develop an improved rapport with ambiguity.

For example, last night a moth fluttered in the beam of a headlight crying out that it was more colorful and wild than a Fauve painting I wished it an eternal life unequalled by worms.

Autumn balloons rise into a lopsided sky while I play a violin on the moon and parables manufactured by life swarm below the surgical incision of a dead thermometer.

Indentation represents absence in a bowl of salad as the biology of a mirror which has been boiled to an intuitive red congeals into taillights and is glued to an armchair.

Dear Ezra I have glimpsed your art but the hospital is no longer accepting patients.

If any of this is a reflection of my attitude toward rain I will fold it like a sweater and put it in a drawer.

Carry a pile of laundry without modifying anything carry it in a cup of coffee comb your hair open your vest of red velour to a mongrel abstraction and a moose and an eye translate the communion of colors into a frequency vague as a gallon of fog wine for the eyes vivid as a fire in Cézanne the armchair feels wonderful bite a cracker.

There is nothing larger than denial the car accelerates an ecstasy raises a book of poetry oh look the Louvre is open fold the light into a highway there is a broom on the floor murmuring hair let yourself dissolve into eyeballs mass is a raw example of abstraction and somewhere in Africa everyone itches to see a Corot and do cartwheels through life birds are complex creatures they acquire this state by disembarking on so many flights and a simulacrum of April grips a curl of clouds while the sandman hammers a nest.

All the paintbrushes are hooked to the stepladder because I am too sensitive for technical details.

Have confidence in your hunger contemplate the actuality of fire and blood while pressing the buttons in an elevator vividness ignites beauty a paintbrush full of paint a Cubist full of light a bone full of songs a pain full of pleasure a splendor full of iron.

A larynx is a guitar of the throat instinctive as pleasure smear the wax on all the furniture electricity imbues consciousness the word ‘spoon’ is but a handful of vowels and consonants it invites the metamorphosis of ducks a flock of mallards shattering space.

Existence is a radical proof of nipples each voyage is a complex mosaic of daydream and gallantry floating is easy and swimming is fluid Picasso painting a dog.

Unprecedented herds of elk spitting leprechauns a dog barks a mirror reflects tuna and jingles the moss of a thrush an oboe augments the intensity the clay is lyrical accept your giant it is a ghost I am always baffled by everything but in a very eloquent manner echoes in a hothouse express the enigma of denim and a clean well-lit room full of luminous balls maneuvers space like a tongue loaded with parables of potatoes descriptions without end act like a phonograph a bear eating pineapples surrounded by beautiful planets the lobster is autonomous the sensation of bleeding from the neck makes me feel Parisian that is to say chiaroscuro.

Infinity crashes into a hole and rolls around like a birthday cake for a wizard the abalone is delicious stir yourself with a spoon of poetry ablution is a noise it is a pink emotion anyone can arrange a ceremony with a black emotion and a canister of propane the incentive to see it happen drags its grammar into the light an emotion palpable as a boat trembles violently put a little plaster on it Byzantine shadows I prefer not to reveal my injury it is a ball of spun sugar you can always change your mind in a dialogue teeming with geometry all life has thecapacity to float water and muscles go together there is a pulse in the wrist there are veins in the hand rivers of blood each conquest ruins our swords a surge of unexpected emotion climbs through my bones like a cloud full of light a pair of soft leather gloves beans growing by a wall apples in sweet development the appetite sharpens maple beams support the roof death is fondled like a gun.

2 comments:

Sometimes banishing the comma and also getting rid of short snappy sentences seems the best way to present the miracle of thought reverie as it courses and loops something like the Mississippi after a good strong rain but maybe better the Mississippi down where it meets the sea which I think is near New Orleans so you have oxbows and shifts at least where we have let the river be and then broad marshes or swamps and all the rest of the delta zone then the waves the waves of the sea pounding the sands relentlessly as Robert Duncan wrote and he as you remember also wrote that he hears tides of himself all night in it and in conclusion thank you John Olson for sharing this marvelous prose poetry.

Thank you Steve yes absolutely I wanted to jettison the comma toss it overboard and float the old man river to Louisiana in a churn of words with Mark Twain at the wheel of the boat and Huckleberry Finn and Jim and Arthur Rimbaud all on a raft smiling delirious and wild.

The truth is simpler I ran out of commas I'll have to make a run to the comma store and maybe pick up a few colons and semicolons too.

About Me

John Olson is the author of Backscatter: New And Selected Poems, from Black Widow Press, Souls Of Wind, a novel about the notorious French poet Arthur Rimbaud in the American West, from Quale Press, and The Nothing That Is, an autobiographical novel from Ravenna Press. Larynx Galaxy, a collection of essays and prose poetry, appeared in June, 2012, from Black Widow Press. The Seeing Machine , a novel about French painter Georges Braque, appeared from Quale Press in fall 2012.